Nowadays, wireless communication devices are equipped with various enhanced features to identify its current geographical location. Examples of wireless communication devices include Mobile devices, Laptops, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and the like. Many wireless communication devices, for example mobile devices, are equipped with GPS navigators to identify its current location. Hence, a mobile device in the wireless communication network, upon receiving a request to find its co-ordinates or current geographical location, automatically switches on the GPS module for resolving geographical bearings.
Another method to identify current location is the use of Wi-Fi triangulation method and Bluetooth triangulation method. In this method, the location of a particular Wi-Fi base station to which the mobile device is currently associated is identified. However, the main challenge lies in clearly identifying the physical location of the mobile device, physical location being indoors and outdoors of a building.
Though, GPS method is more accurate of the available methods and is also a preferred one, but its signal intensity is quite weak and also requires open-sky and line of sight ambience. Due to these reasons, ordinary mobile devices need to spend a lot of battery power to detect and process the satellite signals before the geographic co-ordinates are finally resolved. Moreover, locating mobile device during indoor operations is even more difficult using GPS method due to the aforementioned reasons. Further, the Wi-Fi method is used for indoor environment, as the Wi-Fi is generally available in indoor environment.
Currently, there is no method available to Mobile Station to estimate the type of environment (indoor or outdoor) that the mobile device is experiencing and to identify method based on the current environment. For example, in second generation (2G) wireless communication networks and third generation (3G) wireless communication networks, there is no Information Element (IE) in the network's System Information Broadcast (SIBs) Messages or signaling procedure, that can tell if the mobile device is in indoor environment or outdoor environment. Similarly, currently there exists no other procedure in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specifications by which mobile device can know if the mobile device is in indoor environment or outdoor environment. Thus, after receiving request to identify location, the mobile device generally starts with pre-defined ways of scanning for signal for each of the technology to arrive at best location estimation method to be used. Accordingly, the unnecessary scans lead to the drainage of battery resources in the mobile devices in the current schemes.
Hence, there exists a need to efficiently determine the best location identifying method during operation to identify the location of the mobile device.